In His Own Words

Forget the media. Forget fact checks. Forget facts. If, and I know this is a lot to ask, we can trust video footage of Trump speaking, let’s make an argument based solely on the words Trump has spoken, and stood by, on camera. I’ll even avoid the more famous clips, except for this one:

Eleven twelve. People have already jumped on this, but it’s so wrong I don’t think he knows how to say numbers. I think he may well have been trying to say 112, which is still wrong, but not by an entire order of magnitude. I suspect his business record is indicative of an inability to name actual numbers, but records are off the table for this discussion. Video evidence only. I would not be concerned for a student who got a math answer off by ten. I would be deeply concerned by a student who called 112 eleven twelve with insistent confidence.

You can tell when a word takes him by surprise. “In dust rees” indeed. When I watch his mostly on-script speeches, I try to imagine a Tea Partier watching an Obama speech. When Trump sticks to reading, and you have an inclination to believe what he’s saying, his little asides seem clever and personable. To me they seem like the actions of an enormous asshole, and that’s what Obama looked like to a lot of Republicans. So, yeah, I get it, if you watch this stuff and think the country is being attacked by anarchists, you’ll be cleaning your guns and voting Trump.

Yet even in these moderately stately diatribes that clearly bore him, his self-satisfied smugness shines through. Was Obama smug sometimes? Yup. Didn’t like it in him either.

Give it about 10 seconds from the mark. “I was actually disappointed.” Followed by a chuckling crowd. He was disappointed that he didn’t get to send in federal troops to attack citizens. So we’re supposed to infer that he didn’t send them in because it turns out he didn’t need to, but he was sad he didn’t get to deploy military action on US soil. If you’re worried about violent insurrection, you should be relieved that you don’t have to deploy the military. Trump’s smirking like he’s sad he forgot to send in an extra army in his last turn of Risk.

At his official events, he drones through “anarchists, agitators, rioters” etc. with the minimal dignity requested of a politician, but in his campaign speeches, he’s grinning and joking about it. He’s getting the crowd to laugh along with him at the prospect of killing huge numbers of citizens. He does this a lot.

Aside from his chronic inability to complete a sentence, what I hate most here is the “Do you know this thing? Yeah? Name it.” This is a condescending habit of arrogant people. At face value it amounts to “I know something and to continue this conversation you must earn your place in it.” It is usually wielded by people who don’t want you to know the answer so they can feel superior when they tell it to you. It is used strategically in court rooms in win-lose situations, and by bad teachers to instill obedience and make students feel like they’re in a competition.

“Or whatever you want to call it.” Even from a hospital, sick, trying to reassure his own people and a world not really sure what will happen if he dies and terrified of turning on the TV, he can’t pass up a chance to remind everyone he wants to call it “the China virus.” It is a formerly unimaginable level of pettiness. I had bullies in second grade less relentlessly petty than this. He seems unable to get through any interaction without some form of bullying or bravado. It is the hallmark of the most unlikeable, fragile people I know. They are always playing a game in their head in which the only way to score a point is to take it from someone else. They always think they’re winning, and constantly amazed when they discover yet another person doesn’t like them. They can only accept sycophants into their world, because everybody around them must always be losing.

Pollsters are corrupt but he’s doing well in the polls. He can’t resist a petty jab even at the people giving him good news. I’m sure true believers work this into their brains as Trump confirming that everyone not giving him good news is a liar, and that’s what the political left worries about. To me it’s watching someone unable to resist a sucker punch.

The next couple of minutes is a nutshell of most of the usual drivel with a bizarre “Russia! China!” shout. I don’t even know what those words are supposed to communicate anymore. Bragging about beautiful weapons is the political equivalent of bragging about your own dick. Or it would be if he hadn’t actually bragged about his dick during a debate. So I guess now bragging about your own dick is the political equivalent of bragging about your own dick.

This is a drunken rant that tapers off into mumbling when he loses the thread. From a sober person with access to nuclear weapons.

I didn’t have to but everybody made me. He said it explicitly a few months ago with “I don’t take responsibility” but he’s always saying it. I wanted this but somebody took it away. I could have done this but they wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want to go but they made me. He actively says everything is somebody else’s fault so he doesn’t have to take responsibility. I wouldn’t accept this behavior from a stranger’s child. Here it is particularly egregious because it’s so unnecessary and stupid. He could have easily spun this into sympathy, since his own people are getting sick and dying, but his brain can only forecast the possibility that somebody would call him weak for being in a hospital, so he rambles on about how somebody made him do it, which is ironic because that’s a pretty pathetic thing to admit.

This is painful, but two minutes in and Trump doesn’t understand the point, can’t let somebody else talk long enough to explain it to him, and spends his time hamming for the cameras. These conversations are supposed to be the normal, private operation of the government. Trump has to have them on camera because he can’t do it. He has nothing to contribute to the operation of government. Trump only knows how to reiterate campaign nonsense, so he uses this meeting to pander to fans. Trump doesn’t know anything at all about border security. He doesn’t know how to debate or discuss. He doesn’t know how to make a deal. He’s obviously gone through his whole life bullying his way through every conversation the way he does here.

He switches semantic tacks like he lost control of his sail in a storm, finally landing on “I’ll shut down the government if I don’t get what I want,” then petulantly ends the discussion like a spoiled brat.

Trump always falls apart under questioning because people are asking him to clarify things that he’s said and he can’t because there’s no substance behind the things he says. He repeats his own talking points with rambling defensiveness until he gets angry and leaves.

The ads peppering all these videos are getting pretty weird. The last one was “BREAKING NEWS: YOU CAN NOW VOTE EARLY” sponsored by the Trump campaign.

Here you can see his brain clicking over in real time, as he’s about to respond until he realizes “alarmist” is a new word he can use to demean someone. You can see him perk up a little as he thinks about accusing people of being alarmist, and he tries the word out a couple of times to see how it feels. That’s the only thing Trump will take from this conversation.

Another edition of the polls are lies but we’re doing well in the polls. After years of this, it’s striking how little changes. The speeches are mostly the same, retreading ancient material because he can’t come up with anything original.

He looks at school. The best part is he doesn’t know what 1619 is and, when told, has to insist that nobody knows what it is. If he admits ignorance, he has to make it because it is a thing that cannot be known. I don’t even think he’s intentionally gaslighting here. I think he’s vastly ignorant and has learned throughout his life that the only way he can converse with people is to debate in bad faith.

This is an insult from a first-grader.

Oh, the Axios interview. He spends the entire thing melting down, but the beautiful thing about this particular mishmash of words and interruptions is he opens up with “fake news” and then says that is exactly what he did and defends it. Even if you think they should be abducting people in unmarked vans to intimidate antifa, why lie about it? This sounds like Holocaust deniers, whose entire platform is “It didn’t happen and I’m glad it happened.” This is knowing what you’re doing is horrible. If he had just said “Yes, we’re rounding up people and we’ll keep doing it” I would have more respect for him. But then there would be accountability, and his spine can’t handle imaginary weight.

I could go on, but that feels like enough. No fake news media, no facts, no statistics, no charts, no studies, no records, no tax returns. Only video footage of Trump speaking. When all you have is Trump speaking, he turns out to be petty, stupid, and cruel.

The only people who like petty, stupid, cruel people are other people who are petty, stupid, and cruel. Petty people think the world is unfair to them and they’re righteous in getting back at it. Stupid people don’t know they’re stupid. Cruel people, on the other hand, are well aware of their cruelty. They revel in it. They like to see cruelty.

All I ever had to do was listen to Trump’s own words to decide he was a sociopath who would burn the world down to protect his glass ego. To know he was an unrepentant bully. And I think anybody who likes him knows this, and doesn’t care because they are the same kind of person.

I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind. And if it took you a couple of years to understand what Trump is, that’s fine. I’m here to tell anybody who still supports Trump that I will never speak to you again. You are not welcome in my home. If you are on my property, I will ask you to leave, and if you don’t leave, I will remove you. I will not argue with you. I will not work with you. I will not help you when you are in need. I will not forgive you when you are dead.

Unlike you, I do respect your right to exist. But I do not respect you, so I will pretend that you don’t.